How I Ended Up Working at Bustle

If I've learnt one thing about journalism, it's this: at the moment, nobody really understands it

I touched down at JFK a year ago, hoping to be as successful a British import as One Direction. Only, I'm a journalist, not a pop star. At that point, what I knew about journalism could have been written on a postage stamp, and that postage stamp would have read "um, newspapers." I'd figured that grad school would act as a crash-course in the industry, a Grandmother Willow figure tracing a sage (and maybe musical) path to editor-in-chief of a major newspaper or magazine.

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Instead, on the first day of orientation, sitting in our steel-backed chairs, we were bluntly informed that some of us would never get jobs in journalism. It might be because we'd abandon the profession voluntarily, or we just wouldn't be good enough. (I looked around the auditorium, gazed briefly at my freakishly intelligent classmates, and decided that that was probably going to be me.)

There just weren't that many jobs available, she continued. Most to blame was the Internet, which had made information so readily available that there was no pressing need for, say, a daily newspaper. Facebook and Twitter hadn't helped things, because they now dominanted breaking news. Everyone was a citizen journalist, thus thinning the need for qualified journalists, and ad revenue had all but disappeared from the print industry. The explosion of tablet computers hadn't helped, and that's without mention of the recession. News titans of the last century — the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Inc. — were struggling to keep their heads above water, in part because they hadn't anticipated or prepared for the overhaul the web would give the industry. If you aren't completely, irreversibly committed to this career, the professor continued, you should walk out right now. I remember feeling more impatient than intimidated.

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Sure, it was going to be hard, but I knew that: I'd already left my home, moved to another continent, and messed with my chances of a career in British journalism by skipping off to an American college. I was desperate for the semester to start already, so that I could figure out the industry for myself. What followed was a brutal 10-month program, modeled on the 24-hour news cycle and the harsh state of the industry.

We took six courses over a 10-month period, each of which was expected to be treated like a full-time job. Professors advised us not to go home over Christmas break, which was catchily re-named "Christmas Reporting Break," and our theses were due the day after Spring Break (you guessed it: "Spring Reporting Break!"). We worked all day, all night, and every weekend. And that was the point, beautifully made: If you can't hack it, you won't last anyway. By spring semester, it was time to figure out my next move. At 22, I'd never held down a job, and I was terrified of what the real media landscape was going to look like. I pictured sitting in a swivel chair for twenty hours of the day, hands clenched around a coffee mug, unable to doze off for even a second.

But, I started sending resumes out in hopes of getting an internship. Every one I applied for rejected me. Quickly. I'm not talking one or two rejections — my e-mail folder titled "Rejections!" filled up with maybe 40 or 50 messages. And the stakes felt higher for me since my visa dictated that if I didn't get a job, I'd be not only unemployed but swiftly deported. (Humph. These sort of things never happen to One Direction.)

I'd just glumly hit "send" on an application for a website that published breaking news about drugstores (I'd written enthusiastically of my appreciation for Duane Reade) when I spotted an ad for a "paid writing opportunity." I applied, even if I knew better by then than to apply for anything paid. They forwarded me an edit test, and after an interview, they offered me a three-month internship, with the possibility of extension. "Sorry?" I replied, baffled. "Can you repeat that?"

"Are you sure it isn't a cult?" my dad asked. I pondered the question for a while. There did seem to be more chance of recruitment from a clever cult than an honest-to-God media company.

As it turned out, Bustle wasn't a cult, and I wasn't ejected from the country. For four months, I've been writing for the site's news section, scouring the web for stories or angles that grab me — what does Obama mean by the phrase "international norms"? Is Zuckerberg right to believe that Web access is a human right? Why are there no black Emojis? — and pitching them to my editor, who tends to rein in some of my broader ideas ("You know, gun control!") but gives me freedom to figure out by myself exactly how to approach a story. Bustle is still small and new, meaning that I'm experimenting with my voice and my contribution to the conversation, just as the site is experimenting with its own.

I was lucky to find work at a tiny place teeming with possibility, one that wasn't afraid to take a risk on (not to mention, hand a paycheck to) a young writer that wasn't even slightly established. I'm lucky that those places exist, and indeed they're popping up left, right and center in this "new media" landscape. The site launched in June, flew relatively under the radar for a couple of months, and then, overnight, become controversial. And sure, it's felt shitty to read strangers on Twitter making fun of articles you've worked hard at, topics that you believe in, and pieces your friends have written. But it's par for the course: Vice faced a hell of a backlash, as did Jezebel, both of which have more than had the last laugh. For every person that shares the site critically, it reaches someone in their network who clicks on and enjoys the content, and comes back for more.

I'm not sure how much I believe in the adage that all publicity is good publicity, but if said publicity does reach a reader that it wouldn't have otherwise, then I don't see how that could be a bad thing. I know what they say about journalism: that it's a cheapening, dying industry, with a decent chunk of its big players close to extinction. That job satisfaction is low, pay is meagre, and ruthlessness is necessary — basically, it's the professional 28 Days Later.

At my graduation ceremony, Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei told us "new journalism" — writing dictated by the needs and means of the Internet, disseminated on tablets and smartphones, requiring journalists to engage their readers more than ever or risk them looking elsewhere — is here, and there's no fighting it. What this generation of journalists is doing, VandeHei said, is creating an entirely new media landscape: one that's unprecedented, is still struggling to deal from its financial losses, and has no idea where it'll be in ten years. But that's only part of it.

The industry has a bigger audience than ever, he continued, and new, sharp ventures are trying everything possible to keep it afloat. Old journalism might be dying, but I don't think that has anything to do with the death of journalism. With every new digital enterprise, there's a consumer ready and waiting, and a forum (the Web) to maximise the potential of every product. Right then, listening to him describe the arena I was entering, I didn't feel any rush to get the hell out of the room. I thought, well, this should be exciting.